The Russian publication "Meduza" got access to the mail of an FSB employee who has been fighting independent Russian culture for 10 years.
FSB officers monitor Russian artists
Journalists write that Sergei Dubov, an FSB employee, was responsible for "protecting" Russia from independent artists. In particular, he collected incriminating material on theatre critic and curator Marina Davydova.
He also probably participated in a campaign to harass director Zhenya Berkovich and actress Varvara Shmykova, who spoke out against the Russian Federation's war against Ukraine.
All this happened through the Podkoverka Telegram channel, which criticises and calls for the harassment of opposition theater actors from all over Russia, which journalists associate with Dubov.
How Russian cultural figures are harassed through the Telegram channel
At the beginning of March 2022, the Russian theatre critic Marina Davydova began to be threatened after she published a petition on her Facebook page against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Someone painted a large letter Z on Davydova's apartment door, and she noticed that her phone was being tapped.
On the day of Davydova's departure from the Russian Federation, Sergei Dubov sent several files to his mail: photos of Davydova's Israeli passport and the page from it with an American visa, as well as a picture of Marina herself at the table with the documents lying in front of her.
Later, these photos appeared in a propaganda video criticizing the Russian independent theater. The video was reposted by the anonymous Telegram channel "Podkoverka", which had previously written a lot of insults about Davydova and her relatives.
"Podkoverka" regularly publishes personal photos and videos of cultural figures who are undesirable to the current Russian Federation authorities. So, in the summer of 2022, intimate pictures of director Zhenya Berkovich appeared on the channel.
A year later, the director was accused of "justifying terrorism" for the performance and was sent to the pre-trial detention centre.
At the beginning of 2021, Russian actress Varvara Shmykova posted a video in support of Alexei Navalny, who then returned to Russia after being poisoned.
Almost immediately, she lost the opportunity to work normally in Russia, and in the summer of the same year, a photo of a naked Shmykova appeared in the anonymous Telegram channel "Podkoverka" — together with actors Oleksandr Gorchylin and Ivan Mulin.
The actress told Meduza that the FSB accessed the photo through Telegram.
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- Category
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